Why You Should Use A Warmed Knife To Slice Cake

Picture this: You've just spent hours cracking eggs, measuring flour and sugar, beating together a batter, and baking a cake to perfection. After cooling, icing, and decorating, it's finally time to cut and serve the cake, only for half of your cake and icing to end up on the knife.

It's an annoying but all too frequent scenario home and professional bakers alike frequently find themselves in. It's no fault of your cake or baking skills, though. Cake portion markers are great ways to mark your cakes, as are fishing lines, recommends King Arthur Baking. They also recommend using tomato knives, or any other high quality serrated knife as opposed to regular, non-serrated chef's knives — no matter how sharp. 

Even with the highest quality knives and baking tools available, though, you still may have trouble cutting your cake. Luckily, there's one simple and affordable — free, even — trick to make sure you get the perfect slice of cake each time.

To get the knife to cut through your cake without any icing or cake coming up with it, Kitchn says you need to heat the knife up. They specifically recommend using a hot knife rubbed with a damp towel — the slightly wet blade keeps the knife clean, while the heat allows it to cut through swifter and cleaner without disrupting the cake and icing.

Kitchn recommends using a blow torch to heat the knife for a few seconds, or holding it over the flame on a gas burning stovetop. If you don't have either of these things, you could also combine both steps into one by running the knife under hot water until the blade is warm, drying it off enough that you don't get the actual cake and icing wet, recommends King Arthur Baking. 

You could also chill the cake first, or use both techniques in combination for an extra clean slice of cake.